Sunday, May 31, 2015

Lots of designer names - Jessica Jones, Amy Butler, Heather Ross, Lotta Jansdotter, Kate & Birdie Paper Co., etc. I hope you find a favorite among them!Click here to go shopping!Quick specs overview:Features: Removable strap with buttons, drawstring cover, cylindrical body, fully lined.Size:7" across, about 7.5" high with the strap down and about 13" with the strap up. Materials: Canvas on the outside, accented with cotton and home-dec fabric, and lined with wipe-clean materials on the inside - either oilcloth or laminated cotton. You can read the individual item listings in the shop for the exact lining for particular buckets. If you'd prefer to make your own, you can buy the sewing patternhere:

Saturday, May 30, 2015

I am so glad I made these after all! Initially, with all the other things going on here (Menagerie, the Marker Pouches, the Minecraft birthday party, etc.), I thought I'd just make the two buckets we needed for the girls' teachers and be done with them.But, as is always the case, as I dug out accent fabrics from my stash to assemble the print combos, I found myself caving. I mean, why pretend I'm not addicted to mass-producing? So I started to lay out and cut. And then, 8 buckets in, I ran out of canvas. So much for my addiction.

So just eight buckets this year instead of the usual dozen. Two for the teachers, and six for you guys from which to pick your favorites. Emily and Jenna are going to pick their teachers' buckets and I'll list the remaining six inthe shopthis weekend. I just have to get the photos uploaded and find some shipping boxes.

Next weekend is Birthday Party #1. My party prep (aside from sending out invites) as of today is ZERO. This is the latest I've ever prepped for a party - truly breathtaking procrastination, if I may say so. The children have been panicking, wondering why I haven't asked them to help with anything yet, but I'm all, like, "Later! Must. Sew. Now."Oddly, I'm not even freaking out that I'm not freaking out. My mantra is, "I have to find some cardboard and then I'll be okay."Wish us luck. If we can pull this off, it will be a miracle.

Saturday, May 23, 2015

Happy weekend, everyone!Three quick announcements today:1 The marker pouches are in the shop now. Get them while you can!Update: Er, it seems they've all been bought up already. Sorry there weren't more to go around, guys. If you still want these pouches, I'll try to make more throughout the year, like when it isn't crazy end-of-school season. Let me know in the comments if you'd like them, to give me an idea of how many we're looking at.

2 Quite a few of you have tried to make these marker pouches using my tutorial here, and have left comments or written to either ask for dimensions or to lament that the dimensions you chose didn't work out as well as you'd hoped. I'm sorry I didn't provide the templates earlier - I honestly wasn't being selfish or anything; I was just too lazy to trace and annotate and scan them, and I thought the tutorial photos would be enough for you guys to run with. Anyway, in response to all those requests, I will be uploading all my templates soon, so that you can use them along with the tutorial. No, it will not be a pattern - it will just be that free tutorial plus my templates and you can go and make as many as you like for personal, non-commercial use. Look for the templates in the upcoming zippered bag tutorial series - the marker pouch (and this very fun variation of it, below) will be one of the receptacles under deconstruction.

(Argh! Let me confess that keeping that tutorial series under wraps is making me slightly ill. I'm so impatient to share it! If you think that marker pouch is cool, wait till you see the other things we'll be making with zippers!)

3 There will be Lunch Buckets in the shop soon!I cut them out today instead of procrastinating and reading books or something. As soon as I procure some buttons, I will start sewing. Excited!!! Check back here for an announcement when they're ready to buy!Have a wonderful, restful Memorial Day weekend, US friends!

Thursday, May 21, 2015

Erm. I see from the date stamp that it has been more than two weeks since I last posted.How on earth....?!Never mind. Let's just call it life and move on, shall we?So, end-of-the-school-year looms ahead. Once again, the girls will be saying goodbye to their teachers. And, once again, we will be coloring bookmarks and baking cookies (one hopes) and making receptacles. Problem is, some of those teachers, having taught my older girls in previous years, already own the lunch buckets that are our traditional teacher gifts. So, for those teachers, I made marker pouches. And then Emily put in a personal order for an extra pouch for her own markers. And since I was cutting out a few, I thought I might as well cut out a few more.

These are the ones not going to teachers.

I plan to put them in the shop for you guys to buy for your teachers, or yourselves or whomever you like, in response to the various emails I've gotten from folks asking if I'd custom-make them (answer: not really, but I'm happy to mass-produce a few extras when I'm making a teacher batch).

I'll try to get my act together and list these ASAP,

and get them in the mail in time for the end of the school year (ours is the first week of June, but I know many of your kids get out a week earlier).

Here are some quick shots so you know what they look like, and how many of what kind of writing implement they can hold - we counted about 14-15 of the fat Mr Sketch markers, 22 or so of the regular Crayola markers, and at least an entire box of the 48?50? Prismacolor pencils. I'll let you know here on the blog when they're in the shop - hopefully by the weekend.

I need to get started on the lunch buckets next. I don't know if I'll be making extras for the shop or not - it's been quite a crazy May and I'll be lucky if I can even get the teachers' buckets done on time. But I'll try!

Another quick update on Menagerie: it's in the testing lab now, and we're waiting on feedback. Be patient with us, guys - the thing is mammoth - but we're working to get it to you as soon as humanly possible.

Meanwhile, enjoy these beautiful spring days! It's hard not to be distracted by the bright green all around us (or the cursed pollen). Talk again soon!

Tuesday, May 5, 2015

I mean, if you were a new reader (welcome!) you might, based on the more recent posts, be led to believe that this is a softie blog. Because it's all I seem to have been producing since the start of the year! And veteran readers who're following ikatbag for the drafting, cardboard or science stuff are probably in despair because those have all but vanished completely since whenever.

Not intentional!

Now, it's true that sometimes, I get into specific project moods. Like I might be insane in the wintertime and feel like drafting coats and wool skirts. Or in the summer I might be obsessed with kid crafts. And I do have a year-round bag fetish. But more often than not, the flavor of any particular crafting season is heavily influenced by working opportunities, both commissioned and self-initiated. Given the choice, I'd sit around at home and bake and swim and run and write and read with my kids as creative outlets. But a person has to work sometime, right?

And so it was with deep amusement that I looked back over the past couple of months of archives and realized that everything was coming up softies (and there are more in the works, believe it or not- stay tuned!) My kids love this, of course - they much prefer me making toys to boring Mom-skirts. Because every single toy on this blog - softie and otherwise - was inspired by my kids and made for them. Except one.

Which brings me to this post.

Some months ago, the good folks at Homespun, the gorgeous Australia-based sewing magazine, commissioned this work. They put forth their idea for a mother cat with kittens, much like my old Big Pig, and let me run with it.

And what fun I had!

I am so thrilled to be able to share this project with you! You can find it in the May 2015 issue of Homespun. It has color photos and detailed sewing instructions, along with full-size templates:

US friends - can you suggest where we can buy Homespun here? Barnes & Noble, maybe? I'll head out sometime this week to peruse their magazine racks and if I find it, I'll let you know.

Collaborations and commissioned projects like this are part of what I do as a blogging/etsy/pdf pattern designer sewing person and I love that I get to co-create with people in faraway countries whom I've never met in person and probably never will. This is my second feature in Homespun (the first was here) and the team are among some of the most delightful and gracious people I've ever worked with.

And the magazine itself! Absolutely beautiful, down to the matte-finish paper on which the pages are printed.

Then there are the projects and features - and I'm just going to share my favorite:

I will never be able to look at a granny square the same way.

Back to the kittens now:

Whenever I make softies, I usually aim to have them pass my kids' Awww Test.

They did.

Kate was somewhat distraught to discover that the final versions would be sent to Australia for their photoshoot. She did get to keep the earlier samples but she would've preferred to have had them all. Along with her 1 million bunnies.

This is a pattern in fleece (mother cat) and fleece or microfleece (kittens),

and the mother has a zipper in her belly to store her babies.

Although, for thoroughness, I did another sample in fur, with safety eyes.

I like the sleepy fleece version more, though.

I love that the pattern is ready for you in time for the Mother's Day weekend,

so you can squeeze in some sewing time while the meals and chores are being done by other people!

Friday, May 1, 2015

I know it's the hottest thing online now, but everything in it is square and I'm on Team Round (see my sidebar profile) so we're having geometrical megaconflict here. My kids, though, don't seem to think this is a problem.

Someday I will share the inane conversations I've had with them just to understand this gaming phenomenon and which aspects of it might work for a backyard birthday party. Here's just one for today.

Me: So let me get this right ... the nether is like this world you can portal to?

Kid: Yeah. It's really great and useful and everyone wants to get there.

Me: So it's like heaven.

Kid: What? No! It's gross!

Me: But you said...

Kid: You have to go there because there are things there that you need.

Other kid: Potions! You need the nether to brew potions!

Me: You can only brew potions in the nether? (Application: therefore we cannot brew potions at an IKEA table in our backyard.)

Kid: No! You brew potions at a brewing stand. Look! Here's a chart! There are . . . (lists the one million and thirty seven thousand kinds of potions).

Me (5 minutes later): Stop. Those are details. I don't care what kinds of potions there are, because we're going to use Kool Aid crystals in whatever colors we can buy at the supermarket.

Kid: But you have to start with the base potion! It's an awkward potion.

Hello and Welcome!

I am a gratefully unemployed mom of three girls, all of whom are growing up much too soon! I like piles of warm, fresh laundry, the smell of salt air near the beach where I used to live, making lists, anything round (like heads) and the quiet evenings sitting with the man of the house after the kids are in bed.

Copyright

You are welcome to link to this blog and to any post on this blog and use ONE or TWO photos for that purpose. Do not use photos of my children. You are welcome to pin images from my blog, if those photos do not have my children's faces in them. Please contact me if you want to use the text on, or more photos from, this blog. Do not post my tutorials on your sites. Do not translate tutorials from this blog into other languages on your site. The ideas and instructions in the tutorials are free - but please use them to only make stuff for yourself or for gifts and not to sell. Ta! For more information, this and this might be helpful.